Systems and methods for speech recognition and separate dialect identification

ABSTRACT

A speech-to-text conversion system. The two-way speech recognition and dialect system comprises a computer system, an attached microphone assembly, and speech-to-text conversion software. The two-way speech recognition and dialect system includes a database of dialectal characteristics and queries a user to determine their likely dialect. The system uses this determination to reduce the time for the system to reliably transcribe a user&#39;s speech into text and to anticipate dialectal word usage. In another embodiment of the invention, the two-way speech recognition and dialect system is capable of transcribing the speech of multiple speakers while distinguishing between the different speakers and identifying the text belonging to each speaker.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application is a continuation of U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 10/852,638, filed May 24, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,155,391,issued Dec. 26, 2006, which is a continuation of U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 10/178,182, filed Jun. 21, 2002, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,853,971,issued Feb. 8, 2005, which is a continuation of U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 09/628,754, filed Jul. 31, 2000, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,424,935,issued Jul. 23, 2002, each of which is hereby incorporated herein byreference in its entirety.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The invention relates to the field of computer systems and in particularto a speech-to-text converter with a dialect database and two-way speechrecognition capability.

2. Description of the Related Art

Many routine tasks require generating and utilizing written text. Thisis typically done by typing text into a computer via a keyboard. Typingtext into a computer allows the computer to perform a variety of usefultasks such as checking the text for spelling and grammar. The computergenerated text can be incorporated into other documents, sent to otherpeople via e-mail systems, or posted to the Internet. Typing text bykeyboard has the disadvantage that it requires the operator to use bothhands for optimal typing speed, thereby preventing them from using theirhands for any other task. Typing is an acquired skill and can takesignificant time and practice to attain a relatively high rate oftyping. In addition, even a skilled typist can only type at ¼ to ½ therate of normal speech. Thus, it is generally not possible for a typistto transcribe a normal flowing conversation at the same rate it isspoken.

One method developed to allow faster transcription is stenography.Stenography is a shorthand manner of identifying words and representingthem with alternative symbols. Stenography involves the use of astenography machine. A skilled stenographer can easily keep up withtranscribing a conversation as it is spoken. However, stenography alsohas some significant disadvantages. Stenography is a learned skill and astenographer requires a significant amount of instruction and practiceto become proficient. In addition the stenography symbols are not thesame as the normal alphabet and are illegible to one not skilled as astenographer. Stenography symbols are also not typically understood bymost commonly available computer applications or e-mail servers.

Speech recognition and speech-to-text conversion have been developed togenerate text more rapidly while keeping the user's hands free for othertasks. Speech recognition involves hardware and software that is capableof receiving a spoken sound pattern and matching it with a particularword, phrase, or action. Speech-to-text conversion is a more elaboratesystem that is capable of continuously performing speech recognition butin such a manner that it is capable of converting a spoken conversationor discourse to corresponding text that is comparable to what a typistat a keyboard would do, but more rapidly. Current speech-to-text systemsare capable of following a natural conversation and generatingcorresponding text with a relatively low rate of errors with somelimitations.

One difficulty current speech-to-text systems have is correctlyinterpreting variations in speech when the meaning stays constant. Agiven person will tend to pronounce words slightly differently atdifferent times. As they become excited, they tend to speak morerapidly. Many people tend to slur words together or to partially dropphonemes from their pronunciation. For example, “Howareya” instead of“How are you” or “bout” instead of “about”. This is a particular problemwith English because with the example of “bout” versus “about” they areboth proper English words but with quite different meanings. A humanspeaker is familiar with the vagaries of typical human speech and wouldreadily make the correct interpretation in this case, but a machine hasa more difficult time making the distinction.

Some speech-to-text systems address this problem by “learning” aparticular person's speech patterns. This is typically done by samplingthe person's speech and matching that speech with corresponding text oractions. This type of speech recognition or speech-to-text is calledspeaker dependent. Many speaker dependent systems provide a correctionfeature enabling them to iteratively improve the conversion of aperson's speech to corresponding text. Speaker dependent systems canrequire several hours of training before the system is capable ofreliably converting the person's speech to text.

Different people will tend to pronounce the same words differently anduse different phrasing. Oftentimes the variations in people's speechpatterns follow predictable and identifiable patterns by groups such as:the place that the speakers grew up in, their age or gender, or theirprofession or type of work they do. These variations in pronunciationand word use are referred to as dialects. A dialect is typicallydistinguished by the use or absence of certain words or phrasing. Adialect will also typically have predictable manners of pronouncingcertain syllables and/or words. It can be appreciated that thepredictable nature of a dialect could be used to facilitate the learningprocess for a speaker dependent speech-to-text converter.

Another limitation of a speaker dependent system is that it is generallyonly reliable with the speech patterns of the person who trained it. Aspeaker dependent system typically has significantly poorer performancewith speakers other than the trainer, often to the point that it is nolonger useful unless trained with another user. Each new user needs toteach the speech-to-text system their unique speech patterns which againcan take several hours. The speech-to-text system must also store thevoice pattern files of the different speakers, which takes up limitedmemory capacity. It can be appreciated that in circumstances withmultiple speakers a speech-to-text-system that is capable of minimizingthe time required for training for each speaker would be an advantage.

In several situations, a desirable feature for speech-to-text systems isthe ability to not only correctly transcribe the speech of multiplespeakers but also to distinguish the multiple speakers. One examplewould be courtroom transcription, wherein several attorneys, the judge,and parties to the case would have occasion to speak and wherein anaccurate transcription of what is said and by whom needs to be made torecord the proceedings. A second example is a telephone customerassistance line where a company would like a written record ofcustomers' calls to assess their employees and track and evaluatecustomer concerns and comments. It can be appreciated that thetranscription of the conversations in these cases should be unobtrusiveto the participants and should not interfere with the main business athand.

Speech-to-text systems can be provided with more extensive libraries ofspeech patterns and more sophisticated recognition algorithms to enablethem to convert more reliably the speech of multiple users to text.However, these systems become increasingly demanding of computerprocessor power and memory capacity as their flexibility increases. Themore capacious processors and memory increase the cost of the systems.In addition, more complicated algorithms can slow a system down to thepoint that it is no longer capable of keeping up with a normalconversation.

It can be appreciated that there is an ongoing need for a method ofreducing the time needed to train a speech-to-text conversion system andfor providing less expensive speech-to-text conversion systems. There isa further need for speech-to-text conversion that can reliablytranscribe the speech of multiple speakers and be able to correctlymatch the converted text with the speaker. The system and method shouldbe cost effective to implement and not require extensive additionalhardware.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The aforementioned needs are satisfied by the two-way speech recognitionand dialect system of the present invention which, in one aspect,comprises a system for receiving spoken sounds and converting them intowritten text. The system includes a dialect database which is used tonarrow the expected tonal qualities of the speaker and reduce the timerequired for the system to reliably transcribe the speaker's speech. Thetwo-way speech recognition and dialect system allows for determining thedialectal characteristics of a user. In one embodiment, the two-wayspeech recognition and dialect system includes the ability todistinguish between multiple speakers based on their dialectal speechcharacteristics.

In one embodiment, the two-way speech recognition and dialect systemcomprises a microphone, memory, a microprocessor, at least one inputdevice, and at least one user interface. The microphone allows thespeech input of the user to be transduced into electrical signals. Themicroprocessor processes the input from the microphone and otherdevices. The microprocessor also performs the speech recognition andtext conversion actions of the system. The memory stores the “learned”vocal patterns of the user as well as a plurality of dialectal speechcharacteristics. The input device(s) and user interface(s) allow theuser to interact with the two-way speech recognition and dialect system.

In this embodiment, the two-way speech recognition and dialect systemprovides dialect determination by posing a series of questions to theuser. The questions can branch depending on the respondent's answers. Inone embodiment, the questions attempt to determine the likely dialectalcharacteristics of the speaker by asking a series of questionsindicative of the speaker that relate to speaking style. These questionscan include questions determining the speaker's age, gender, level ofeducation, type of work that they do, where they grew up, where theylive now and for how long, whether they are a native speaker of thelanguage, and if not what their native language is.

The two-way speech recognition and dialect system uses the responses tothese parameter questions to determine the dialect that the user likelyhas. The two-way speech recognition and dialect system then uses thelikely dialect to narrow the speech patterns to expect for the user. Forexample, the speech patterns and vocabulary of a young, working classfemale from rural South Carolina are likely to be quite different thanthose of an older male doctor from Bombay, India. The two-way speechrecognition and dialect system uses this information to narrow theexpected tonal range of the speaker and anticipate certainpronunciations and word uses. Thus, the learning period for the two-wayspeech recognition and dialect system is shorter than for a genericspeaker dependent speech-to-text conversion system.

Another embodiment of the present invention adds the ability totranscribe the speech of multiple users and the ability to identify anddistinguish the speakers. The two-way speech recognition and dialectsystem monitors the pronunciation of the speakers and determines thedialectal differences between the speakers. The two-way speechrecognition and dialect system uses these differences to determine whois speaking at any given time. Thus the two-way speech recognition anddialect system can distinguish between the speakers and identify theorigin of each segment of transcribed speech. The two-way speechrecognition and dialect system can number the text from each speaker orpresent the text on a monitor in different colors or fonts for thedifferent speakers so that the transcribed text for each speaker can bereadily distinguished.

These and other objects and advantages of the present invention willbecome more fully apparent from the following description taken inconjunction with the accompanying drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 shows a block diagram of the hardware components of the two-wayspeech recognition and dialect system;

FIG. 2 shows the data structure of a typical dialect record in memory;

FIG. 3 is a flow chart depicting the dialect determination process;

FIG. 4 is a flow chart depicting the actions the two-way speechrecognition and dialect system performs during speech-to-textconversion; and

FIG. 5 is a flow chart showing the operation of the two-way speechrecognition and dialect system with multiple speakers.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

Reference will now be made to the drawings wherein like numerals referto like parts throughout. FIG. 1 shows a block diagram of the hardwarecomponents of a typical two-way speech recognition and dialect system100. The two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 is adapted toreceive audio input and convert the audio input into corresponding textin a manner that is well understood in the art. The two-way speechrecognition and dialect system 100 is capable of learning the individualvocal characteristics of a user and also includes a database ofdialectal characteristics. The two-way speech recognition and dialectsystem 100 queries a user to obtain dialectal parameters used todetermine their dialectal characteristics. By pre-determining the user'sdialectal characteristics, the two-way speech recognition and dialectsystem 100 reduces the duration of the learning period to recognizespoken words in a manner which will be described in greater detailbelow.

The two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 comprises a soundtransducer 102. The sound transducer 102 is adapted to accuratelytransduce sounds in the normal range of human hearing from approximately20 Hz to 20 kHz and send a corresponding analog electrical signal to aprocessor 104 in a manner well known in the art. It can be appreciatedthat the performance of the two-way speech recognition and dialectsystem 100 is dependent on the quality of the signal provided to thetwo-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 by the soundtransducer 102.

The processor 104 is adapted to control the operation of the two-wayspeech recognition and dialect system 100 in a manner that will bedescribed in greater detail below. The sound transducer 102 is connectedto the processor 104 and the processor 104 is provided with interfacecircuitry to amplify, filter, and digitize the input from the soundtransducer 102 in a manner well known by those skilled in the art.

The two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 also comprisesmemory 106. The memory 106 stores a dialect database and the learnedspeech patterns of the users in a manner that will be described ingreater detail below. The memory 106 is connected to the processor 104and adapted to receive, store, and recall data to the processor 104 in amanner well understood in the art.

The two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 also comprises atleast one user interface 110. The user interface 110 can comprise amonitor, speaker, or any other devices for delivering information to auser. The user interface 110 provides queries to the user and displaysthe generated text resulting from the speech-to-text conversion in amanner that will be described in greater detail below. The userinterface 110 is connected to the processor 104 in a manner wellunderstood in the art.

The two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 also comprises atleast one input device 112. The input device 112 can comprise akeyboard, mouse, touchscreen, or any other devices for providing inputto a computer system. The input device 112 is connected to the processor104 in a manner well known to those skilled in the art. The userinterface 110 provides means for a user to provide answers to queriesposed by the two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 and tocorrect generated text as needed in a manner that will be described ingreater detail below.

The components and operation of two-way speech recognition system 100described thus far is substantially similar to the components andoperation of currently available speech recognition systems, such asDragon Naturally Speaking™, which is commercially available. Thesesystems are capable of receiving an audio signal, translating it into anequivalent digital signal, and then comparing the resulting digitizedsignal to a library of corresponding digitized signals in order todetermine a spoken text word that matches the original audio signal. Itwill be appreciated from the following discussion that any of a numberof different currently available algorithms for matching audio sounds totext can be used to implement this embodiment without departing from thespirit of the present invention.

The two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 also comprisessoftware adapted to enact the various features of the two-way speechrecognition and dialect system 100 as will be described in greaterdetail below. The memory 106 is provided with an array of dialectrecords 120. An example dialect record 120 is shown in FIG. 2. Eachdialect record 120 contains parameter structures 122 with informationdefining a dialect. In this embodiment, a dialect is defined by thespeaker's age, gender, level of education, type of work they do, whetherthey are a native speaker of the language or not, if not what theirnative language is, where they grew up, where they currently live, andhow long they have lived there.

Each dialect record 120 also contains data structures 124 definingphonemic characteristics specific to that dialect. The phonemiccharacteristics are the typical ways speakers of a particular dialectpronounce different words and phrases. It will be appreciated that thephonemic characteristic data structure 124 may define particular rulesof pronunciation relating to particular dialects. For example, in somedialects, the letter “h” is not pronounced at the beginning of words. Asanother example, dialects are not just regional differences oreducational differences in the manner in which a person speaks, it mayalso be the result of age or sex. The phonemic characteristics datastructure 124 may also contain frequency information for the dialects ofchildren or adult female speakers as the frequency or pitch of theirvoice is generally higher than with adult male speakers and knowing thisinformation will assist the processor 104 in correlating text words withreceived audio words in the manner that will be described in greaterdetail below.

Each dialect record 120 may also contain a lexicon database 126containing any words or phrases that are unique to the dialect. Thelexicon database 126 may contain a complete lexicon of each recognizeddialect or it may contain simply those words that are unique to aparticular database that can not be determined by the processor byapplying the phonemic characteristics 124. It is understood that todetermine a particular word from an audio signal, certain general rulescan be applied to recognize some words, e.g., a child will generallyspeak in a higher pitch than an adult. Hence, to determine the word, theprocessor 104 may simply frequency transform the digital signal andcompare it to a standard database or lexicon of words. Alternatively,there are also certain pronunciations of words that are associated witha particular dialect that are not rule based, e.g., the use of the word“y'all” for all of you, in the Southern United States. The lexicon 126can either include entire dialectic pronunciations of words or it cancontain a pointer to a standard lexicon and selected special casepronunciations for particular dialects.

It will be appreciated that there can be any of a number of differentways of organizing the data structures of the system 100. Theorganization illustrated in FIG. 2 is simply illustrative of onepossible manner of organizing and storing the data and should not beviewed as a limitation of the manner of implementing the presentinvention.

FIG. 3 shows a flow chart of the manner in which the two-way speechrecognition and dialect system 100 performs a dialect determination 200whereby the two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 decideswhat the dialect of the user is. The user initiates the dialectdetermination 200 by providing a start command 201 via the input device112 to instruct the two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 tostart training. The two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100determines in decision state 202 whether the dialect of the user hasbeen defined. If it has, the two-way speech recognition and dialectsystem 100 skips the dialect determination 200 and jumps to apre-setting state 232 that will be described in greater detail below.

If the user's dialect is not defined, the dialect determination 200proceeds through a series of parameter queries. The two-way speechrecognition and dialect system 100 presents a question to the user viathe user interface 110 and awaits a response from the user via the inputdevice 112. The user interface 110 can present the query as a dialog boxon a monitor, an audio question via a speaker, or any of various othermethods well known in the art. The response via the input device 112 cancomprise typing a response on a keyboard, touching a particular place ona touch-screen, providing a verbal response to the sound transducer 102,or any of various other types of input methods well known in the art.Once the two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 has receiveda valid response to the query, the two-way speech recognition anddialect system 100 stores the response in the memory 106 and proceeds tothe next query until the series of questions is completely answered.

In this example, the two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100queries the user for their age in state 204, their gender in state 206,their level of education in state 210, and the type of work they do instate 212. The two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 thenqueries the user in state 214 whether they are a native speaker. If theyare not, the two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 proceedsto state 216 wherein the two-way speech recognition and dialect system100 queries the user for their native language. If the two-way speechrecognition and dialect system 100 determines in state 214 that the useris a native speaker, the two-way speech recognition and dialect system100 skips state 216. In either case, the two-way speech recognition anddialect system 100 then continues querying the user for the locationthey grew up in state 220, where they currently live in state 222, andhow long they have lived there in state 224.

The two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 uses the responsesprovided to the queries described above to determine in state 226 whichof the available dialect records 120 most closely match the user. Theprocessor 104 can select the dialect record 120 based upon a logicaldetermination process that correlates the available dialect records 120with the responses to the questions. The exact manner of selecting thedialect record 120 will, of course, vary based upon the application.However, if a person is an adult male from the southern United States oflimited education, the processor 104 can select a dialect record 120that corresponds to the particular dialect that this person is mostlikely to have.

Once the two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 hasdetermined the closest dialect match, the two-way speech recognition anddialect system 100 in this embodiment commences a training mode 230 asshown in FIG. 4. The training mode 230 allows the user to read aloud oneof a set of pre-defined text documents. The multiple text documents areconstructed to emphasize the aspects of each particular dialect that areknown to be difficult to distinguish and recognize. The text documentchosen for the training mode 230 corresponds to the dialect determinedin the dialect determination 200 as previously described. The two-wayspeech recognition and dialect system 100 compares the text generated asthe selected text document is read aloud to the original text document,and make corrections as needed. By knowing in advance which words toexpect, in what order, and a general pronunciation pattern, the two-wayspeech recognition and dialect system 100 is able to more rapidly andaccurately match the user's spoken words with corresponding text and tobe able to do so with a smaller text document.

In the pre-setting state 232, the two-way speech recognition and dialectsystem 100 uses the phonemic parameters contained in the dialect record120 selected in state 226 to pre-set the tonal qualities, pronunciation,and word usage that the two-way speech recognition and dialect system100 expects from the speaker. The two-way speech recognition and dialectsystem 100 then presents a selected text document as describedpreviously in state 233 via the user interface 110. The presentation ofstate 233 includes a prompt to read a sequence of the selected sampletext aloud into the sound transducer 102 and the two-way speechrecognition and dialect system 100 waits to receive speech input instate 234. The two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 thengenerates a corresponding set of text using the phonemic characteristic124 data and the lexicon 126 data from the selected dialect datastructure 120 and presents the text via the user interface 110 in state236 in a manner well known to those skilled in the art. The user thenreviews the generated text for accuracy while the two-way speechrecognition and dialect system 100 waits in decision state 238 for acorrection input or further speech input. If the two-way speechrecognition and dialect system 100 generated accurate text, the usercontinues to the next sequence of sample text and reads it aloud intothe sound transducer 102 and the two-way speech recognition and dialectsystem 100 returns to state 234.

If the two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 made any errorswith the transcription, the user indicates the correction needed via theinput device 112. The two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100then modifies its files to match the received vocal pattern with theintended text in correction state 242 in a known manner. The two-wayspeech recognition and dialect system 100 monitors in decision state 244whether the user has completed the set of sample text. Once the finalsequence of sample text is correctly transcribed, the two-way speechrecognition and dialect system 100 exits the training mode 230. Byknowing in advance the words to expect and more or less how the speakerwill pronounce them, the two-way speech recognition and dialect system100 is able to significantly reduce the learning time needed forreliable speech-to-text conversion.

It will be appreciated that the learning or training sequence describedabove is one of a number of iterative processes that can be used totrain the two-way speech recognition and dialect data base system 100.It should be appreciated that regardless of the actual learning ortraining sequence used to train a system to recognize a particular user,obtaining parameters indicative of the speaker's dialect greatlysimplifies the training routine as the system 100 is better able torecognize words that are spoken in the particular dialect. Moreover, itwill also be appreciated that with systems that do not require training,obtaining the dialect data prior to operation greatly enhances theaccuracy of the system.

Once the two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 has completedthe training mode 230, the two-way speech recognition and dialect system100 can enter a run mode 250. The run mode 250 comprises waiting for theuser to speak in state 234, transcribing the speech into text in state236, and waiting for corrective input in decision state 238. The runmode 250 also comprises correcting the generated text in state 240 andmodifying the two-way speech recognition and dialect system system's 100files in state 242 as necessary. It should be understood that thespeech-to-text transcription is a continuous process and the correctionstate 240 and modification state 242 previously described are coded tooperate as parallel processes to the text transcription. Thus thetwo-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 is able to update itsperformance to track changes in the speaker's vocal patterns in thenormal course of use.

In another embodiment, the two-way speech recognition and dialect system100 is adapted to perform a speech-to-text conversion with multiplespeakers and to distinguish between the multiple speakers as shown inFIG. 5. The two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 need notperform the dialect determination 200 or the training mode 230previously described. Instead, the two-way speech recognition anddialect system 100 performs a multi-speaker mode 260 that issubstantially similar to the run mode 250 previously described, howeverin this embodiment there are multiple speakers.

The two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 receives theusers' speech in state 234 and generates corresponding text in state 236in the manner previously described. The two-way speech recognition anddialect system 100 also determines in state 238 whether corrective inputhas been received in state 240 and if so, modifies the two-way speechrecognition and dialect system system's 100 speech recognition files asneeded in state 242 in the manner previously described. As the two-wayspeech recognition and dialect system 100 receives speech in state 234,the two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 stores the vocalpatterns of the speech in memory 106 in state 262. In a similar manner,the two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 stores the textgenerated in state 236 in memory 106 in state 264. As the two-way speechrecognition and dialect system 100 receives and stores vocal patterns instates 234 and 262 and generates and stores corresponding text in states236 and 264, the two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100associates and records the association of the vocal patterns andcorresponding text in state 266.

The two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 compares theobserved vocal characteristics stored in state 262 to the array ofdialect records 120 in memory 106 in state 270. As the two-way speechrecognition and dialect system 100 is performing the comparison of state270 the two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 waits indecision state 272 for a match to be made. When a match is found, thetwo-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 stores the associationbetween a vocal pattern, the corresponding text, and the dialect record120 in state 274. The two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100then determines in decision state 276 whether all of the vocal patternshave been accounted for. If all the vocal patterns have not beenassociated with a dialect record 120, the two-way speech recognition anddialect system 100 returns to state 270.

If all of the vocal patterns have been accounted for, the two-way speechrecognition and dialect system 100 proceeds to decision state 280,wherein the two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 determineswhether the dialect records 120 selected for the multiple speakers aremutually exclusive. If the dialect records 120 are all mutuallyexclusive, the two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 usesthe dialect records 120 as a flag to distinguish the speech andcorresponding text associated with each speaker in state 282. If thedialect records 120 are not all mutually exclusive, the two-way speechrecognition and dialect system 100 uses any dialect records 120 that areunique as flags and uses the tonal pitch of the speaker for theremaining vocal records and corresponding text as flags in state 284.

The two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100 continues toreceive speech in state 234 and record the vocal patterns in state 262as well as transcribe the received speech into text in state 236 andstore the transcribed text in state 264. The two-way speech recognitionand dialect system 100 uses the flags set in state 282 or 284 toidentify the transcribed text corresponding to each speaker byhighlighting the different speakers' text in different colors or fontson the user interface 110 or with other methods well understood in theart in state 286. By transcribing the text of multiple speakers anddistinguishing and identifying the transcribed text corresponding toeach speaker without requiring any input from the users other than theirnormal speech, the two-way speech recognition and dialect system 100offers a convenient, unobtrusive method of multi-speaker speechtranscription.

It will be appreciated that the two-way speech recognition and dialectsystem 100 can determine dialects in the same manner as described abovefor each of the individuals. The two-way speech recognition and dialectsystem 100 can ask each of the speakers a series of questions to obtaindialect parameters that are indicative of the dialect of each of thespeakers. Once the dialect has been determined for each of the speakers,the system can use this information, either by itself, or in conjunctionwith other identifying cues such as pitch of voice, modeled patterns ofconversation, etc. to identify each of the speakers while preparingwritten transcripts of oral conversations.

From the foregoing it will be appreciated that the system of theillustrated embodiments provides a system which is better able toperform speech to text translation as a result of initially determiningthe dialect of the speakers by ascertaining dialect parameters from thespeakers. This either reduces the learning time and/or it improves theaccuracy of the speech to text transcription performed by the system.

Although the preferred embodiments of the present invention have shown,described and pointed out the fundamental novel features of theinvention as applied to those embodiments, it will be understood thatvarious omissions, substitutions and changes in the form of the detailof the device illustrated may be made by those skilled in the artwithout departing from the spirit of the present invention.Consequently, the scope of the invention should not be limited to theforegoing description but is to be defined by the appended claims.

1. A method of processing speech for a speech recognition system, themethod comprising: receiving input from a user indicative of at leastone dialect parameter; prior to comparing user speech signals with worddata, comparing the at least one dialect parameter to dialect parameterdata to determine at least one dialect that the user is likely to have;receiving speech signals corresponding to spoken words of the user; andusing the at least one dialect that the user is likely to have toproduce text representations corresponding to the spoken words of theuser.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the input comprises non-verbalinput.
 3. The method of claim 2, further comprising receiving the inputvia a computer peripheral device.
 4. The method of claim 3, wherein thecomputer peripheral device comprises at least one of a mouse, a touchscreen and a keyboard.
 5. The method of claim 1, further comprisingprompting a user to provide the input.
 6. The method of claim 5, whereinthe user input comprises at least one of the user's age, gender,educational level, native language, geographic origin, and currentgeographic residence.
 7. The method of claim 5, wherein said promptingcomprises presenting a plurality of queries to the user.
 8. The methodof claim 1, further comprising accessing a database defining phonemiccharacteristics associated with the at least one dialect.
 9. A systemfor transcribing spoken words to text, the system comprising: word datacorrelating words to speech signals; dialect parameter data associatedwith a plurality of dialects; and a processor configured to receive froma user at least one signal indicative of at least one dialect parameter,the processor being further configured to compare the at least onedialect parameter to the dialect parameter data to determine at leastone dialect of the plurality of dialects that the user is likely to haveprior to comparing speech signals from the user to the word data. 10.The system of claim 9, wherein the processor is further configured toproduce text representations corresponding to the speech signals fromthe user.
 11. The system of claim 9, wherein the processor is furtherconfigured to output at least one query signal for prompting the user toprovide answer signals indicative of the user's dialect.
 12. The systemof claim 11, further comprising a user interface for communicating theat least one query signal in the form of a screen display.
 13. Thesystem of claim 9, wherein the at least one signal indicative of atleast one dialect parameter comprises non-verbal input.
 14. The systemof claim 13, further comprising a computer peripheral device configuredto receive the non-verbal input.
 15. The system of claim 14, wherein thecomputer peripheral device comprises at least one of a keyboard, a touchscreen and a mouse.
 16. The system of claim 9, further comprising amemory configured to store said word data and said dialect parameterdata.
 17. A speech recognition system comprising: means for receiving atleast one dialect parameter from a user; means for comparing the atleast one dialect parameter to stored dialect parameter data todetermine at least one of a plurality of dialects that the user islikely to have prior to receiving speech signals from the user; meansfor receiving speech signals corresponding to spoken words of the user;and means for producing text representations corresponding to the spokenwords of the user using the at least one of the plurality of dialectsthat the user is likely to have.
 18. The system of claim 17, furthercomprising means for storing the dialect parameter data.
 19. The systemof claim 17, wherein said means for receiving at least one dialectparameter comprises means for receiving non-verbal input from the user.20. The system of claim 17, further comprising means for prompting theuser to provide the at least one dialect parameter.